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Monthly Archives: August 2012

Ah, August, that most bittersweet of months. Its early, languid days shimmer with heat and promise, offering the tantalizing prospect of an endless summer. Within weeks, dusk vibrates with the hum of cicadas, hinting at autumn’s inexorable approach. Those days are not far off, but there’s something I’ve been dying to share with you before it’s too late: peach and white miso ice cream. Imagine: creamy, caramelized custard layered atop salty tang, each mouthful tinged with the acidity and fragrance of impossibly ripe peaches. The mood of this ice cream is slow and sensual, like eating peaches licked with sea spray and sand after a leisurely day at the beach. It’s summer in a spoonful, and it’s both as peculiar and delicious as it sounds.

In the spirit of brevity, I’ll leave you with the recipe and some favorite scenes from summers past.

Having experienced a few of Japan’s notoriously hot and sticky summers, I’ve picked up some survival tricks that don’t necessitate cranking up the air conditioner. This was particularly important last summer, when energy-saving measures (setsuden) were in effect following March’s disaster. At the time, I was living in a dense Tokyo suburb that routinely ranks as the hottest city in the country. The heat-trapping effects of concrete and asphalt combined with the suffocating environment of a 15 square meter (roughly 160 square foot) apartment meant I had to devise some creative strategies for staying cool, not to mention sane. (Cold showers, frozen washcloths, and a trusty sensu were all critical components of this endeavor.)

Making ice cream doesn’t require a fancy electric ice cream maker, or even an old-fashioned hand-cranked one like the one I use, but a freezer is most definitely necessary. (Of course, ice cream has been around a lot longer than electric freezers, but that’s a post for another day.) Today, frozen food is so cheap and readily available that we often forget what a luxury it once was to simply have ice. Indeed, the notion that we now have machines to make frozen water seems both appalling and magical; what culture could be both so lazy and inspired as to invent a device for such a simple end? And yet ice machines and their kitchen brethren – immersion blenders, coffee makers, and the rest – make a range of small, simple pleasures readily and widely accessible.* Chief among these simple pleasures, of course, is ice cream.